Raising Education Money With Slot Machines

There's an issue here that we'll be voting on soon that will be receiving lots of advertising money. If I understand it right, the plan is to install lots of slot machines, and use the billions in profits from those to provide a university education to anyone that wants it or something. When I say "billions", I'm not really exaggerating. I think the "Pro-" side is claiming that this will bring in close to a billion a year. It's also not clear to me how the money would be distributed. (Gee, you'd think I should do more research before stating an opinion.) Anyway, what do you think about this idea?

I'm against it, of course. Also, I have not seen any polls, but I expect the issue to fail miserably.

First of all, let me say that I don't see why the government has to be involved in gambling. I mean, if I want to install a slot machine somewhere and people want to put money in for a chance to get money out, I don't think the government has any business in prohibiting (or seriously restricting) this sort of commerce. So then, why am I against the issue? After all, the state isn't forcing anyone to play the slots, is it?

Here are a few thoughts in no particular order:

• Where there is money, there is corruption. Recent history has certainly shown this. I'm convinced that reducing the amount of money in government is a way to reduce high-level corruption.
• While I won't go as far as to say that gambling is "wrong", it does seem to be morally neutral at best. On the macro level, when there is profit in getting people hooked, and gambling away money that is really needed for other responsibilities, I'd say that this behaviour is below neutral. I don't see why the government needs to be involved in this kind of thing.
• I've heard government-sponsored gambling described as an additional tax on stupid people, and I think it is. So what's wrong with that? I mean, I'm not stupid; I'm not going to pay a dollar when the odds say that I'll win 98 cents or 95 cents or whatever, so shouldn't I be happy if my relative tax goes down? I'll respond by asking, don't stupid people have it tough enough? I won't name any specific difficulties that stupid people face today, for fear that some of my non-stupid readers may have faced the same difficulties. But I don't see any reason for additional taxes on stupidity.